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Deb Zimbelman puts a sour cream cherry kuchen — a kind of German coffee cake — on a rack to cool at the Das Kuchenhaus Bakery in Bridger on Wednesday. The bakery sells its goods at local farmers’ markets and businesses.

Deb Zimbelman prepares cinnamon, sugar, butter, and walnut kuchen on a rack to cool at the Das Kuchenhaus Bakery in Bridger Wednesday, April 14, 2010. The bakery sells their goods at area farmers markets, Good Earth Market, and Off The Leaf.

Food safety bill could take bite out of small producers

Tester proposes amendments to exempt businesses with incomes of $500K or less

Deb Zimbelman puts a sour cream cherry kuchen — a kind of German coffee cake — on a rack to cool at the Das Kuchenhaus Bakery in Bridger on Wednesday. The bakery sells its goods at local farmers’ markets and businesses.

CASEY RIFFE/Gazette Staff

Deb Zimbelman prepares cinnamon, sugar, butter, and walnut kuchen on a rack to cool at the Das Kuchenhaus Bakery in Bridger Wednesday, April 14, 2010. The bakery sells their goods at area farmers markets, Good Earth Market, and Off The Leaf.

America’s food safety laws need tightening, but not if small
producers and farmers’ markets are harmed, said U.S. Sen. Jon
Tester, who worries that new reforms could clobber the local-food
movement.

Wednesday, the Montana Democrat rolled out two amendments
exempting small food producers from a broad overhaul of food-borne
illness regulations.

The Food Safety Modernization Act is headed to the Senate floor
next week. Proponents say the act is good medicine for a food
industry stricken by high-profile outbreaks of E. coli and
salmonella in recent years. Among other things, the bill requires
better record keeping, testing and tracking from food producers of
all sizes.

Small producers, who contend they’re not the source of the
nation’s food problems, say the costs of meeting the new
regulations will put them out of business.

“What they’re really after is having everybody who makes or
sells a product have a tracking system,” said Perry McNeese of Good
Earth Market. “That’s one piece of it. That kind of record keeping
for a small producer can become astronomical.”

Good Earth Market relies upon 81 small vendors producing
everything from baked goods to jam, McNeese said. Most of those
businesses are one-person operations. Collectively, they might do
less than $400,000 in business a year with the Billings food
cooperative. The tight relationship Good Earth has with its vendors
would make it easy to respond to any food problem, he said. The
small vendors are responsive in ways larger ones aren’t.

Tester echoed those sentiments while announcing his amendments
during a press conference between Senate votes.

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“We’re really taking a punch at people who don’t need to have a
punch taken at them,” Tester said.

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State and local regulations apply to small producers, which
should be enough, the senator said. His two amendments would assure
that producers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $500,000 a
year would only answer to state and local laws for processed food.
Producers selling food directly through farmers’ markets would also
be exempt.

Not everyone believes local food is so wholesome that it should
be exempted from food safety reforms. Howard Reid, who oversees
food and consumer safety for Montana’s Department of Public Health
and Human Services, said the food-borne illnesses handled by his
office stem from various sources, including small producers. For
that reason, he supports regulating small producers under the Food
Safety Modernization Act.

Sandra Eskin, who oversees food safety issues for the Pew
Charitable Trusts, said Montana has food-borne illness outbreaks in
its fairly recent past. In 1995, E. coli contaminated lettuce
sickened nearly 100 people in the Missoula area. Health officials
traced the outbreak back to a half-dozen lettuce farms selling
produce under the same brand, but that’s where they lost the trail.
Without traceability, inspectors weren’t able to positively
identify which of the farms caused the contamination. They did note
that one Montana farm was using a manure-contaminated stock pond to
water its lettuce.

Eskin said there should be regulation of scale, which she thinks
the pending legislation allows and the Food and Drug Administration
and U.S. Department of Agriculture will accommodate.

“I’m sympathetic to their concerns,” Eskin said of the small
producers, “but get in there and give us solutions. Tell the FDA
and USDA what you can do, not what you can’t.”

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